Self-taught summer

By Lauren Lindstrom

8:48 p.m. May 30 2013

Illustrations by Geneve Ong / North by Northwestern

LEND A HAND
Summer is also a great time to get involved in the community, no matter where you are. The key is to find volunteer opportunities that fit both your interests and talents to ensure you are engaged and the work is mutually beneficial.

Try the local library:
The public library is a gold mine of volunteer options. Most libraries offer free courses in literacy, money management or career building. Put your academic interests to good use and see if these courses need volunteers or tutors.

Go back to your roots:
Stop by your old elementary or high school, or find one in the city you’ll be living in this summer to check for tutoring or mentoring opportunities. Call your favorite teacher and see if he or she is teaching summer school or knows students who need some extra help. Schools might also offer opportunities to work with kids through sports, music or theater, so it’s possible to find a niche for all interests.

Play to your strengths:
Love science? Call the local hospital. Want to be outdoors? Contact the park district for openings. Picking something that fits your interests and future plans benefits both you and your employer.

Go to the source:
Call your hometown’s city hall and ask for a list of volunteer opportunities for the summer. Many cities, including Evanston, have such information posted on their official website. City websites can also direct you to nonprofits and businesses in the area that need summer help.

Coding
Learning to code or program is quickly becoming a desirable skill in the eyes of future employers. Careers from journalism to engineering can benefit from the knowledge of one or more of the web “languages” in use today. Codecademy is an interactive website with step-by-step tutorials on multiple coding languages, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP. As a bonus to interactive and engaging courses, all of the tutorials on the site are free.
codecademy.com

Languages
¿Habla Usted español? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? If you’re considering traveling this summer, Livemocha can help you brush up on your high school Spanish or take a crash course in a completely new language. The online tutorials are taught by native speakers and combine writing, speaking and vocabulary-building activities in 38 available languages to build proficiency. All basic content is free, with paid Livemocha tutors available for more advanced one-on-one lessons.
livemocha.com

Fitness
Finals week comfort food catching up with you? If your summer workout plans lie beyond walking distance to SPAC, there are plenty of online fitness regimens, including CrossFit. It offers workout routines, training demos and nutrition guides. While some of Crossfit’s courses require a registration fee, most content is free. As an added motivator, there is a message board for encouragement, tips from the CrossFit community and games to elevate competition to a new level.
crossfit.com

Photo editing
Whether you’re looking to pad your resumé or just edit beach pictures of your friends, learning Adobe Photoshop comes in handy. Adobe Labs offers many online video tutorials for Photoshop and other Adobe products. Using the website’s tutorial builder, users can download step-by-step guides from other users or upload their own.
labs.adobe.com/technologies/tutorialbuilder

Cooking
For students who are inept in the kitchen but want to expand their repertoires, Hilah Cooking offers step-by-step YouTube videos for everything from margaritas to corn dogs. An Austin-based actor, comedian and singer, peppy host Hilah Johnson has 60,000 subscribers to the videos, which aim to teach inexperienced chefs and include recipes with simple ingredients and easy-to-follow instructions. With new videos uploaded twice a week, viewers won’t quickly run out of new dishes to try.
youtube.com/user/hilahcooking